Has anybody tried DADGAD tuning on a 12 string guitar? If so, how did it work out?
I can think of a couple of reasons not to use it but I thought I’d like to get your opinions before mentioning them.
I haven’t, but I’d think that if your lower octave courses are tuned in octaves it might get a bit jingle-jangley, what with several of the higher notes being duplicated.
I’ve only ever owned one 12-string (a small-bodied Gibson, which I sold in 1979), but I do recall that getting everything in exact tune–including fretted notes matching open strings–was quite difficult.
With all courses tuned in unison, it shouldn’t be much different from a 6-string.
A friend of mine bought a 12-string a year or so back and I messed with it for a few afternoons. I had great fun playing it in DADGAD. I didn’t have it long enough to properly evaluate it, but my initial thoughts were that I liked it.
What I didn’t like were chords where I played all 12 strings - just too much noise to pick up the subtlties DADGAD. Also, the high G string bothered me. About 20 years ago I owned a 12-string and kept breaking the high G. I replaced it with a regular G and much prefered it. If I were ever to get another 12-string and play in DADGAD, I’d probably do the same again.
A friend of mine took the 6th course of strings off of his Martin 12 string and turned it into a “Guittern”. It sounded pretty neat, but not as nice and full as a true Cittern.
I imagine your friend tuned in fourths rather than fifths. I would, if I tried that trick. That would affect the sound a lot.
It’s actually impossible with the octave strings, no matter what the scale. To be in tune up the neck if they are in tune when open, the octave string and the lower string have to be fractionally different in length. You would need a bridge adjustable not just for each course but for each string to solve the problem. I would imagine that really expensive twelve string guitars would have this feature.
Listen to twelve string guitarists who play up the neck and Greek bouzouki players. They both tend to stay down in first position on those octave-tuned courses. Think of people like Blind Willie McTell and Blind Willie Johnson. The slide ventures right up the neck but mainly on the top course.
I can imagine though, with the right strings, that DADGAD would sound great on the 12 string.
Open tunings make slide possible, and slide on a 12 string is like no other! My favorites for that are Leo Kotke, and a newer discovery, James Coberly Smith. You can hear him on cdbaby.com here:
Check out #2 “Chase” my favorite!
Leo Kotke was an exception to my remarks about 12-string players and slide and I knew that when I posted. Do you know if he has a guitar that has solved the tuning problem? It sure sounds like it.
Thanks for that link Barry, very nice. I love listening to good 12 string stuff, but it’s a bit hard to come by.
I actually almost bought a used 12 string earlier this week, because I’ve been wanting one for years. Unfortunately, upon seeing the guitar in person, I had to pass as the top had bellied significantly, and the guy wouldn’t budge on the price. If he’d been willing to go down a bit I’d have bought it and then installed a Bridge doctor.
Ah well, I’ll continue my search, and in the mean time, I’ll probably pick up that CD.
Loren
Well, he was an exceptional guitar player in the 70’s but I don’t believe he had anything special in equipment then; it’s just that he was going for the overall effect in his sound, and probably didn’t worry too much about being slightly out in the upper reaches, besides being able to compensate slightly with a slide. But, a lot of his music was pretty fast, so not much time for analyzing the tuning on a particular note either. Coberly reminds me of him too-similar styles.
You’re welcome, Loren. Yeah, when I first heard this, it made me want to grab it too! Not much in 12 string, and especially slide.
Too bad about the 12 string you passed up, but another will come along. Have you tried the Martin J12-15’s? I tried one a while back, and was pretty impressed with the tone, especially for the bucks.
Seagull also makes some very good guitars for the money, and I just saw that Elderly lists a S-A12, which has a cedar top (don’t know that I would want a Cedar top on a 12 string-lots of pull on the bridge), but they might have a Spruce topped version, don’t know. The quality in construction is there, though.
One of the big problems with used 12 strings is that they many times need a neck reset, with the action so high at the upper end. If you can’t shave the saddle or bridge, then it becomes an expensive proposition. I never did try a bridge doctor, but it seems to work for those bellied tops. I don’t know if it changes the tone any, though.
I’ve heard good things about the Martin J’s but haven’t run across any yet. Not sure I’d be into a 15 though, as I’ve never been crazy about the sound of the mahogany topped guitars I have tried. The J12-16 might be more to my liking, but it’s out of my price range at the moment, even used.
I’ve been hoping Guild would start producing a GAD series Jumbo 12 string, but so far, no luck. The closest thing to that is the guitar I looked at the other day, an Alvarez AJ60S-12, which is esssentially a Guild Jumbo 12 copy with a Solid Engleman top and laminated maple back and sides. Costs about half of what the J12-16RGT goes for new, and of course is far less than a new Guild.
Loren
I didn’t think I would like the Martin Mahogany topped 12 string as much as I did either, but it sounded pretty nice. You might be able to find one to try at a Martin dealer. It still isn’t cheap. Some of the imports, like Aria, and the Alvarez are really nice for what you pay. The workmanship on those two seem to be above average on the solid top models. Elderly has an Alvarez that looks nice-yes, it’s the model you said-does look like the Guild. As long as you have a solid top, you will get a good tone (if they did the bracing right). Just like the Seagull guitars that are made in Canada-really nice construction, and they sound great. Never saw a 12 string, but they do make them.
The “saddle” on my Gibson was horrid. For one thing, it was wood–ebony, I suppose.
Before I traded off my Martin D-34, the saddle had to be relocated to solve a serious intonation problem. [u]Frank Ford[/u] (of Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto, CA) put on a compensated bone saddle that was great. I would think that an expert could come up with a compensated saddle that would at least help with the octave string problem. I don’t suppose it would be cheap, though. On the other hand, it might be fun to do it yourself, given enough time and enough saddle material–and some really good needle files.
It’d be fun for someone like you or Loren. It’d be a living mightmare for me. 
For someone who plays a stack of instruments and was pretty handy at sports involving hand-eye coordination, I’m the most unhandy handyman you’ve ever seen. Well, I can change and clean spark plugs but anything that requires real skill, forget it. Some of my musician friends are also first rate tradesmen and they get a laugh out of my efforts I can tell you, although I can always act as ‘builder’s labourer’ for them. They don’t know how I can play many more instruments than they can and not be able to build a cabinet or rehang a window. I always tell them that it is because I was practising instruments while they were building cabinets. 
Oddly enough, I have sort of the opposite problem as Wombat: I can quickly learn just about anything physically techinical and detail oriented, except when it comes to playing instruments, which is the source of more frustration in my life than anything else. It’s quite strange, I can sit down and concentrate for hours on doing very precise instrument making related skills, but when I sit down to practice any instrument, I rapidly become impatient, restless, irritated and frustrated. Very bizarre. It’s always been that way for me, and it drives me absolutely nuts, because music has always been one of the most important things in my life, yet I still suck as a player. 
Honestly, some days I think maybe I need medication to correct this issue, and I’m not the type of person who normally goes for that sort of thing.
On the saddle subject, I really am surprised this hasn’t been addressed by someone. With all the money, effort and technology Bob Taylor has thrown at guitars, I’d have expected someone like him to have come up with this sort of thing years ago, particularly with 12 strings being a significant bit of business for them.
Loren
I’ve never owned anything but 12-strings and have played quite a bit in DADGAD over the years. I did notice intonation problems up the neck on my old Guild, but the 12 I play now was made by Nick Appolonio (the guy who designed and built all the guitars for Gordon Bok) and has a compensated bridge; I put that guitar in DADGAD for a while and it sounded great, even high up on the neck.
Bok uses custom strings on his 12s (my guitar is a Bok model, but not strung with the extra-heavy custom “fire tower cables” that Bok uses) and he tunes it all the way down to Bb. I keep mine a couple of steps below concert pitch and can tune to “relative DADGAD” (with my lowest note being C and the others relative to that) without too much slackness…I guess how your 12 fares with DADGAD depends on both the guitar and the weight of the strings.
Gerry O’Beirne uses open tunings (several of them) on his 12-string, although I don’t think DADGAD is among them. Still, he’s worth listening to to hear some great 12-string playing in open tunings. His playing of The Princess Royal on Randal Bays’s “The Salmon’s Leap” CD is magnificent.
Isn’t that infuriating? It seems to be a disease specific to music—instruments and vinyl records—that people who own something potentially valuable simply assume that their baby is worth what the price guide says is top dollar for items of that kind. To a lot of dealers, every record is ‘mint’, even though hardly any records that are secondhand are any better than ‘good’ which would make them worth about half a mint copy.
I’m sick of conversations like:
Me: $5,000 for this?
Him: It’s a '62 Strat
Me: But look, the neck has a warp like a velodrome corner.
Him: It’s a '62 Strat
Me: Hey, the bridge just fell off.
Him: It’s a '62 Strat.
I’ve tried to explain to record dealers that records with scuff marks around the hole can’t be ‘mint’ but to no avail. I quickly realised that they use the terminology of grading and the price guides only to give to suckers the appearance of integrity. They aren’t interested in the opinions of people who know how to grade.
I wonder if this happens in other areas. I can’t imagine people paying top dollar for obviously chipped china dinner services or vintage cars that are rusted up and falling apart.
I had a Rickenbacker 12-string electric for around a year. I think I tried dropped D once. .. . talk about an absolutely HUGE sound. It was awesome.
I sold it because I never played it with other people. The proceeds are dedicated to a new completely oddball flute.
But man it was a nice guitar.
I’m with you wombat: If you have a '59 Les Paul that’s been run over by a truck, go right ahead and offer it for sale for 5 grand and no one bat an eye, bizarre.
With the guitar I looked at, the guy told me ahead of time it was in excellent condition, with NO issues. Then he shows up and I take one look and WHOA!! serious top/bridge belly. Okay, the street price for this guitar is under $500 brand new, with a hard case. However this one is 5-6years old, appears to have always been strung up to pitch, does not include the case, needs new strings badly (so I really can’t get the best idea of how it’s going to sound), and is missing one bridge pin.
Now, the guy was originally asking $350. (before I even saw the guitar), way to much. I offered him $250. cash and specified that this would only be “if the guitar was in excellent condition with NO serious issues”, to which he replies “the guitar is essentially mint, no issues what so ever”
Well, in the end, I looked at the guitar, played it a little and decided that the action was still okay, even with the top having bellied quite a bit, and I’d be willing to take a chance on it if he’d drop another $50. on the price. I thought that was quite fair, all things considered, but he wouldn’t have it, saying I was basically trying to steal it from him, sheesh, whatever.
Rant mode off,
Loren
The rant is entirely justified, Loren. That guitar you were looking at is a workhorse. Nobody buys them to hang on the wall. So to be worth even half the new price it had better be in full working order and it had better not show signs of impending trouble.
My 12 string is a K. Yairi from about 1970. It has a beautiful tone that you can only get from a well-made guitar that has aged well. Back then, Yairi wasn’t providing really adequate bracing so there was always a danger of sound box collapse. I paid about half what you would expect to pay for it in perfect condition and hoped my luthier could keep it together. I tuned it down a whole step anyway. Despite the signs of problems, my luthier got body and neck problems sorted out, the action playable right up the neck and the tuning back to standard.
The dealer who sold it to me is an excellent guitarist who knows that nobody buys a guitar like this without wanting it to be fully playable and being aware of the risk. I still got lucky; let’s face it, if the body caved in it would not have been worth anything.
And I still don’t get it. Try selling a book for full price with underliner all through it. Or secondhand pants with holes in the knees. That’s pretty much the kind of deal that dork was expecting you to accept. I can only imagine he had no idea about the intricacies of guitar construction; after all, you were always going to notice the damage when you inspected it.